


Twice Upon an Apricot Moon

by chennieforyourthoughts



Series: Eyeshine & Starshine [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Hitchhiking, M/M, Mentioned Alcohol, Possession, Yôkai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-11-27 10:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20946686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chennieforyourthoughts/pseuds/chennieforyourthoughts
Summary: When Sicheng first met Yuta on a desolate night road, the moon was an unnatural color and theyōkaiwere abroad.





	Twice Upon an Apricot Moon

**Author's Note:**

> NCT Spookfest: Monsters

At the start of Sicheng's headlights was wavering yellow light, and at the end of Sicheng's headlights was smoke. It was not one of his usual desert nights. His was the only car driving the road for dozens of miles in the dead hours, but it was lighter than usual. The moon glowed overhead and his headlights struggled through the flooded air. Normally, it would have been enough to show the road in front of Sicheng and the edges of the desert surrounding him, but that night was different. The smoke had flooded the valley and settled, and now it turned the light brighter but did not carry it as far. It cradled the light, Sicheng thought, as he drove twenty over the limit and waited for something to happen. It was a desert road which felt like one where something would _ happen, _and especially on that night. The human mind was rather good at prediction, and Sicheng was willing to listen to his subconscious and kept himself prepared.

He did not get drowsy. He had been on this road for far too long, had had his coffee before leaving the base as experience dictated. Sicheng had traveled eighty miles home five days a week, fifty weeks a year, for five years to the date, and it was the kind of night which suggested something would happen. So even without the smoke flooding the valley, the lack of depth to the headlights, the stillness of the desert. It seemed that nothing moved, save for Sicheng and his car. Or perhaps everything else was moving, and Sicheng and his car were the ones stationary. He had learned about frames of reference before, and pondered this for a while. The Earth was moving under his tires, and he was moving along the road, so that meant that both were moving. But something else seemed to be moving, some force Sicheng did not know, and that made him not apprehensive towards whatever it was, but anticipatory towards whatever it was.

It was eighty miles to Sicheng's home, and eighty miles to the nearest city, but there were several towns in between. They were small towns, situated on either side of the highway, but Sicheng had come to know them. He hadn't stopped there often, but occasionally he'd recognize a resident or two if they were walking about outside.

The man he saw in the middle of the road was not a resident he recognized.

In fact, Sicheng was just around forty miles out from the city where he lived when he saw the shape of the man appear from the smoke. He was standing facing the opposite lane of traffic, of which there was none, but Sicheng still braked hard. He rolled up beside the man and tried not to let fear take over him. There were probably much smarter things for Sicheng to do than to pick up a strange man from the middle of an abandoned road in the dead hours of the night, but something told Sicheng that it was what he was supposed to do. It felt _ right, _and Sicheng was willing to listen to that for once.

He rolled down his window and leaned out. The man turned his head to look at him, and as Sicheng stopped his car, he could see features starting to become visible in the headlights. Strong features, memorable features, ones that Sicheng had never seen before but knew he would remember for a lifetime.

"Do you need a ride?" His voice was strong, and it echoed throughout the desert valley. Sicheng could not hear the echoes, but other creatures could. Other creatures could hear many things.

Sicheng was halfway expecting a smile of relief, and that was exactly what he got. It seemed like his expectations had been mostly on point for that particular night, and Sicheng wondered whether it was luck or some other force. He knew that luck could be boosted by other things, and had always had rather eccentric beliefs compared to his colleagues.

There were many things the desert could lead one to believe in, especially when one spent as much time out in the places that Sicheng did. For one, Sicheng still believed that there were creatures out there, similar to humans but older and wiser. He had never known exactly what these creatures were, although a bit of him had always suspected they came from the folklore he had been exposed to as a child.

Sometimes he'd see things, Sicheng remembered as he looked at the man standing beside his open window. Things like paw-prints, or scattered bottles of sake he hadn't left lying around, or patterns. Rocks made up the patterns, mostly, and Sicheng had always known that they'd been from the desert, even when he had lived far away from where he now worked.

"Yes, please, if you would be so kind," said the man, and Sicheng waited until the man went around to the passenger's side before unlocking his car. The man's hair was somewhat windblown, not in a romantic way, but like someone who had been wandering across the desert during the afternoon windstorms. Sicheng could see some white dust from nearby playas on his clothes, but otherwise the man looked relatively clean. He held a glass bottle in his right hand, and he was careful when he got into the car not to hit it. He did not seem drunk to Sicheng, which made him somewhat more relaxed. "Thank you. I'm Yuta, I'm looking to go to Karn."

The man seemed quiet at that time, but Sicheng was, too. "Sicheng. Looking to see cars coming before they hit you?"

"Exactly."

Sicheng knew where Karn was, it was between the closest town to them and the city, so he put his car out of park and resumed driving. Yuta did not look over at him, but leaned against the window and seemed to observe the scenery. It was beautiful, even through the smoke and at night, and as they drove, Sicheng decided to roll the moonroof back.

The moon itself came into view, and Sicheng noticed with surprise that it was orange. "I've never seen a moon like that before," he said, and Yuta tilted his head up to look.

"It's the smoke. It's turning apricot," Yuta said, and when Sicheng went back to staring at the road, he kept watching the moon change from white to the color of jam to a dark, red-filled orange. It was a strange moon for a strange night, and although neither commented on it, they both could see it and feel its presence over them.

A strange night indeed, and the _yōkai_ were walking abroad. Sicheng knew that not all of them were walking that night, however, and although he was not afraid, he was somewhat respectfully wary. Respect was what Sicheng believed all beings were owed, as human or inhuman as they might have been.

Sicheng knew what he was sitting next to, just as much as he now knew who he was sitting next to, so he did not need to ask. It was as clear as the other's dark brown mullet, sake bottle, and original location. Perhaps this was not the same _ tanuki _which had followed him through his childhood, but it certainly was not a bad seeming one.

The road stretched on, occasional hills the only distraction from the expanse of smoke, apricot moon, and nothingness. Sicheng wondered if perhaps his trust had been misplaced, if perhaps he should have let the man-creature find his own way home, or if he had done the right thing in offering a ride. Whatever form the _ tanuki _was in, it was a long walk back to civilization.

Yuta kept his fingers wrapped around the stem of the bottle, but did not drink from it. It was technically open, Sicheng could tell, and so he hoped that they would not be pulled over by the police for anything else along the way. But the drive was quiet, and Sicheng watched the road and Yuta watched the moon travel through its phases of color.

It was a strange night, but it ended somewhat less strange than it had begun. "Anywhere along here, please," Yuta said, and it was the first thing spoken for a good while. Sicheng began to slow the car, and came to a stop on the outskirts of Karn. "Thank you very much for the ride," said Yuta, peering through the rolled-down window at Sicheng.

"You are welcome. Maybe I'll see you around sometime?" It was not how Sicheng usually spoke, but nothing about the night was how it usually was, and Yuta seemed unbothered.

"Maybe," the _ tanuki _nodded, and Sicheng watched as he left it at that and strolled off, swinging his bottle all the way.

It was another forty miles to true civilization, Sicheng knew, and not nearly enough hours between then and when he would have to be awake to commute back to work the next afternoon. Despite that, something told Sicheng to stay and watch. He decided to listen to that intuition, for it had not let him down that night.

Sicheng watched the _yōkai_ slip off into the night, and he wondered when the next time they encountered each other would be. In this world, or the next? Or another, far removed from the current time?

The wind escorted the smoke out of the valley in time. Sicheng watched every moonrise and parked his car whenever it began to turn apricot, but his intuition told him that nothing would happen, and Yuta never appeared. Once the last of the smoke had passed, Sicheng resumed his normal drives, and spent his nights barreling down an empty desert road with much better visibility. But although Sicheng could see the road better, he felt like he could not _ see _as well, like part of his sight was gone.

He had not seen pawprints, nor sake bottles, nor patterns since he had last seen Yuta.

It was a name he thought of often, because Sicheng worried that if he stopped thinking about it, it would slip from his mind like the pawprints from the pale sand or the smoke from the valley. _ Yuta. Yuta. Yuta. _ It was concrete that way, Yuta had a body somewhere out there, and Sicheng believed in it.

Sicheng believed in Yuta, and he did not let himself forget. Most of the world forgot about monsters when they stopped being children, but part of Sicheng had never stopped. It fed his mind variety from the monotony of his day, from working at the same station and being around the same people and driving the same road, afternoon and night. There were few things Sicheng missed in the world, and he was relatively satisfied with what he did, but he did miss people. People like his family, who did not know where or on what he worked; a few choice college friends he did not often message; and Yuta. 

Always Yuta.

Time passed, as time always does. Sicheng did not see the_ yōkai_ again for several years, but every night, like a prayer, he repeated his name. _ Yuta, Yuta, Yuta. _He doubted that Yuta would appear again if it were not a smoky night, so Sicheng allowed his mind to relax and be patient. The time would come, if it ever did, and nothing Sicheng could do would change when it happened.

In time, there was a forest fire, and smoke oozed into the valley. Sicheng watched the news reports before heading to work in the afternoon, and although most of him wished for it to be extinguished quickly, a part of him wanted it to last longer so he would have more drives through the smoke at night. More apricot moons to meet Yuta under.

It did not happen the first week, but Sicheng did not let himself lose hope. He believed in Yuta like he believed in his own existence, solid and for the moment unchanging. And on one particularly smoke-caped night, Sicheng saw the shape of a man standing in the opposite lane of traffic. He braked his car as soon as it registered, black against dull grey, and even before the car had stopped and the man had turned, Sicheng knew who it was.

There was the white, white smile, the same unruly hair, the same mischievous eyes. Sicheng rolled down his driver's side window and craned his neck out. "Hello again," he said. Everything felt right to Sicheng that night, but nothing quite so much as the way Yuta looked at him. It was piercing, a knowledge of beings that did not come from books in it, and Sicheng unlocked the door.

"Hello Sicheng." Yuta's voice was exactly as Sicheng had remembered it, almost flippant in tone, but Sicheng knew that at that moment, the _yōkai_ was anything but. "Might I have a ride to the next town, please?"

Sicheng nodded, and Yuta grinned and opened the door opposite from him. "Of course," Sicheng said, rather than _ any time. _ Not any time would work for them, for what they were—whatever that was. At least Sicheng knew he could rely on the fact that he was a human driving a hitchhiking _ tanuki _who only appeared at very specific times down an isolated road, and although something moved in his bones, it was not fear. Perhaps the best way Sicheng could think to describe it was restlessness, restlessness for having the monster who had lived in his mind for so long beside him once again.

He did not see a sake bottle this time, which struck Sicheng as odd, but he did not comment. After all, he and Yuta had not spoken much on their first drive, and Sicheng was not sure how much would be appropriate for this drive. So they traveled in silence, and although sometimes the long drives to and from his work could seem tedious, Sicheng tried to etch every second into his memory. 

"Hey." It was said quietly, but it was loud over the sound of the tires. "There's a diner in this little town, can we stop there?"

Their car was alone in the parking lot, but Sicheng was not terribly worried. If Yuta had wanted to steal his car, he would have had many previous chances. The diner was small, but Sicheng had heard through word of mouth that the food was good. He did not typically eat after work, usually having a meal a day, and the _ tanuki _seemed to know this. 

"Please," said Yuta, "take it." It was a bit of the creature's sandwich, and Sicheng could not easily defy the nudges. So he took it, and ordered Yuta another drink.

It was funny, Sicheng would have sworn sake had not been on the list before they had arrived. But there it was, so he ordered it, and nibbled at the extra sandwich as Yuta drank it down. "You know your _yōkai,_ don't you?"

"I'm somewhat familiar with them," Sicheng agreed, and Yuta smiled. "I used to have _ tanuki _visit me as a child. Not that I ever saw them, until that first apricot moon."

It had not been the first smoken moon that had ever been, not even the first smoken moon that had ever hung low over that valley, but it was the first smoken moon that had ever been relevant to Sicheng and Yuta, and so it was the start. It was first, but it was not a gift—that would be the third moon. During the second, they were having a nice, quiet dinner in diner emptier than a ghost town, because at least ghost towns generally have a few tourists once in a while.

They shared a slice of pie on the house, cherry of course, and Sicheng wondered how he could go back to spending each day eating on his own once he'd had a taste of what eating with Yuta for company was like. Their late dinner was quiet, but they talked more than they had either time in the car, and Sicheng would never complain about that. But eventually every good thing must come to an end, and the shine in Yuta's expression was no exception. "Ready to head back?" He asked, and despite himself, Sicheng agreed.

"Yes," he said, and held open every door on the way out. It seemed that Sicheng's subconscious knew something was happening, although he did not know what it was nor what to do about it. What Sicheng did know he was supposed to do, however, was drive, so he listened to the car's engine catch and wondered if it didn't feel the same way he did.

Sicheng let Yuta go at a town twenty miles from the city. The moon had turned the darkest apricot yet and was edging ever closer to red, and Sicheng stepped out of the car to see him off. He did not know quite what to say, but he did certainly know to look, to observe as much as he could, because there in front of him was Yuta. And Sicheng remembered then that this was a trickster, a shifter, a _ tanuki _without his bottle. "Thank you," Sicheng said, trying to trace the way Yuta's hair stirred in the wind but knowing he would never be able to remember it quite exactly as it happened.

"You are welcome," replied Yuta. "Thank you." There was something about him that seemed to be made of the same spirit as the ground they stood upon, a sort of rugged pride that curved like the smile of the _yōkai_.

And with that, Yuta was gone. Sicheng could not see which form he took to leave, but remembering it was one of eight appeased him. They both liked eight, after all, and Sicheng could not help but smile as he saw what had been left in the passenger's seat.

Sicheng stopped at the dry lake where he had last seen Yuta on his way home from work every night. He climbed onto the roof of his car and let himself fall asleep, and he dreamed sleepless dreams. He no longer slept, per se, but his mind was very much elsewhere.

When the third apricot moon peeked over the tops of the mountains, Sicheng was there to watch it rise. He watched it rise until it was overhead, then let himself be snatched away.

Eventually he opened his eyes and stared up at the moon. He climbed down from the hood of the car, and searched the glove compartment for what he knew was there. It was a quiet night, a still night, and there in the darkness that was lighter than usual, he was not Sicheng.

Sicheng did not see Yuta, but every few years when smoke filled the valley to the brim, he would wake at the side of the road and find an opened bottle of sake in his hand. And he would smile and slowly make his way home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the always lovely Rene for beta-ing this, and to the Spookfest server for the general amusement, spooky stuff, and writing support!


End file.
